Downloading Assignments

Once you connect to the Illiac Cloud, click on the Content icon and you will find all your Harmonia-related course materials. For example, if you are enrolled in a class M101, you materials will be under the submenu for that course. When you select a document from your course menu, Harmonia will perform the following actions for you:

Download the document from the Cloud.

Open the downloaded document in a new Harmonia window.

Content Files

When you select a document by clicking the Content icon, Harmonia opens that file for you automatically inside the Harmonia window. The name of the document is visible to you in the pulldown menu at the top of the Harmonia window.

More About Document Types

When you load a document into Harmonia you can immediately tell you are looking at an Assignment or Lesson by the appearance of the document:

If the document has assessable content (i.e., something gradable), the window's top bar will include a white Check button that allow you to grade the document once you have filled it out. This is a Practice or Assignment document, which are marked in the Content pulldown menu as Try or Do, respectively.

If the document has no grade button, the document is a Lesson. Such documents are identifiable in the Content pulldown menu by a Read button.

If the assignment is timed the top bar will include a digital stopwatch that lets you start the exercise and shows you how much time remains.

Depending on the course and instructor, your assignment material may include both Practice documents and Assignment documents.
From a usability perspective there is no real difference between Practice and Assignment documents: they look the same, both are filled out the same way, and both are graded. The only real difference is that an Assignment grade will count towards your overall course grade, while Practice grades are never figured into this calculation.

There may be a few other differences depending upon how your teacher has configured their assessable (gradable) materials:

A Practice document can be retaken multiple times. An Assignment document is (typically) completed just one time.

A Practice document often randomizes its items when retaken. An Assignment document is (typically) not randomized.

When a Practice document is graded its grade report is instantly available to you. Depending on how your teacher has configured an Assignment document, viewing an Assignment's grade report might be delayed until a certain 'completion date' established by your teacher.